Alter egos of an American nomad

2009-10-09T18:14:00.000-05:00

10 bushes down, 2 to go. My hands may fall off.

2008-09-27T10:47:00.000-05:00

2008-09-16T22:34:00.000-05:00

Bad, naughty radiator!

2008-09-14T16:59:00.000-05:00

2008-09-06T08:02:00.000-05:00

2008-09-04T23:43:00.000-05:00

2008-09-04T23:39:00.000-05:00

Snow?!?!?!??

2007-01-15T20:44:00.000-06:00

Evening Groene

2006-12-26T20:13:00.000-06:00

Groene

2006-12-26T20:10:00.000-06:00

2006-08-08T00:37:00.000-05:00

2006-08-02T19:17:00.000-05:00

2006-08-01T17:52:00.000-05:00

2006-07-31T22:25:00.000-05:00

I am tired of blogger's uploading system. I've been uploading for over an hour and this is all I could get up!

2006-07-31T00:38:00.000-05:00

New socks, new sheets

Ft. Sam Houston

Military housing

2006-07-07T09:33:00.000-05:00

Heading out in a couple of hours. Will be out of contact for at least a week. Tired.

Hello, my pretties!

2006-06-14T20:29:00.000-05:00

Well, it's nearly time for another adventure. Do you know where your towel is?

Actually, come to think of it, I have to find mine. It's in one of these bins.

Yes, it's getting around to that time when I shall go merrily on my way once more, packing up my little car and going in search of.

It seems that the Large Bodies store I work for will be able to transfer me, and today I heard word from the people at my other job, We Are Watching You, wanted to hire me for the position I'm working as a temp, but since I am moving they may be able to offer me something when I get where I'm going. I have several apt. applications on their way from San Antonio places. My favorite looks lovely and some of the pictures remind me of Hawai'i.

I have been trying to blog about the socks I sent out for sockapaloooza, but the last time I had time to upload a picture here blogger wasn't cooperating. So here it is, an obligatory picture of the socks, which I have heard have already arrived in the UK. My own have not arrived yet, and I am a bit sad about that. I am hoping that if they are sent, they will get here before I move!

Handpainted (by yours truly) Elann fixation cotton/elastic yarn.

Long time no blog

2006-05-18T12:03:00.000-05:00

Ah, yes my pretties, it's been a while, no? A year ago I returned from England with a broken camera.

Well, I finally bought a new one! It's not quite as nice as my old one, but does have twice the zoom...at half the cost.

My view today, as I relax.

Here you see how far spreads Wendy's influence:

Yes, I have to have me some tiger socks, too. It's my work knitting. Yes, I said work knitting! I have two jobs, one at a Store for We who Love Chocolate, and another temping at a test enter where my contract keeps getting extended. I like the store best when there are no customers, of course. Then we play with the mannequins.

The other skein is Austermann's new Step yarn. It's infused with aloe and jojoba and it supposed to be really good for your feet. Now if I only knit faster, I could have some warm, good-for-me socks--just in time for summer. That is, assuming it ever stops raining.

I am also working on Eris, in 100% merino. How can I afford that? I bought some of knitpicks' paint-your-own merino sock yarn and doubled it.
440 yards of meino goodness. Cost: $8.

It's wonderful and soft, and promises to make a warm, cuddly jacket.

I do have one question: why dried flower arrangements? They're all over the house here, and I just don't get it. They're full of years of dust and keep dropping little bits all over. I can understand something like, say, saving your wedding bouquet. But six arrangements in a seven-room house?

Olympic knitting, day ?

2006-02-17T17:06:00.000-06:00

Eight days left.
I've gone from this:

To this:

Helllllllooooo, sleeve island!

This is my first time using knitpicks' Peruvian wool, and I've got to say that I may end up liking it ever so slightly better than the Elann brand. I've used Elann's a lot, and this yarn in the initial handling is slightly smoother. I can see I'll have to do a side-by-side comparision.

Counting down to the knitting Olympics

2006-02-07T21:35:00.000-06:00

Wow! I just looked at the page for our little Olympic tribute, and I'm on it. Hello, fellow competitors. (And hello to my "Anonymoused" visitor.)

While the needle for my challenge-knit has arrived from Elann, the yarn has not. I knew it was risky ordering it from knitpicks, but as this will be a gift, I let the giftee choose the color.

My dreaming brain is apparently still set on "hallucinate." I've started to write the dreams down; I find them very interesting...maybe they'll help me write something that others would find interesting too.

No pictures today--though I did finish the painting. I think. I'll have to let it dry and then decide.

Hello sockapalooozers!

2006-02-02T16:22:00.000-06:00

The yarn was bought today!

And I've started oil painting classes.

I have little to say

2005-12-13T18:51:00.000-06:00

It's been a long time since I posted here; I haven't had anything to say. Yet my hit counter tells me that I've passed 1,000 since I started counting.

They didn't like my dissertation. And they waited six months to tell me I'd failed two previous papers. So here I am, doing work I thought I'd finished long ago...and then come extensive dissertation revisions. I turned in one two weeks ago, and it hasn't been acknowledged. I'm sick of waiting, being good, delaying gratification. Yes, I'm very close to an MA. But--I thought I was there. Let me put it this way: I decided to go to graduate school because I enjoyed college, I liked my major and I did well in it. Very well. As in a 4.0 for three years, while working two jobs and going to school full time. The graduate school work was not terribly difficult, nor was there nearly as much as I had to do as an undergrad, even as a sophomore. But the vacuum of feedback, while working in a different system than I was used to, seems to have been my downfalling.

And I've still got to pay for the damn thing no matter what!

Sunday night

2005-09-19T03:00:00.000-05:00

I’ve been having these very intense dreams. While I was in England I dreamed constantly of being asleep in my own comfortable bed in California, despite the fact that I had not been there for several months before I headed out of the country, instead spending the summer in New York—where I am right now. These cocoons of turquoise knit sheets that haunted me made me know that it was time to leave. The dreams were so intense that I would wake with morning amnesia, something that I’d never before experienced. And the intense disappointment I had in finding myself still in my dingy student house so far from the sun and my self-sustained grownup life was so hard to bear day after day after day, eating bread and yoghurt because I couldn’t bear to face the mess twelve people made in our one kitchen.

Now, I still have intense, real dreams, ones that I remember and savor because they are so much more interesting than my real life. Yesterday I was in the middle of writing an email and watching Monsoon Wedding and I dreamed that the sister of the friend I was writing to was getting married, but I couldn’t see the bride’s face, as I don’t know what the sister looks like. Sometimes I dream that I send my best friend growing up a postcard I bought for her in Ireland, and she will figure out that someone cares about her (yes, still, even though it’s silly, I know) and she decides to not have the drink she was about to pour. It’s not my job to save a drunk.

Either my brain is trying to stimulate itself before it dies of boredom, or there’s something wrong that I cannot fix by babysitting to earn the money for a plane ticket. I carry this dissatisfaction within myself, always hoping that somewhere new will help me find the life I want.

There is this core of frustration that lurks deep inside: a loneliness that follows me around, and it’s growing tiring. I thought angst was supposed to be this whole teenage thing, then you outgrew it and were able to go on without being consumed with jealousy. I played duenna to many of my friends, and have grown into a spinster—didn’t you see the pictures of my spinning? There’s this part of all of us that cries out “What about me?!” and it’s hard to stifle. Nor do I think such a voice should be stifled, and compromising isn’t going to satisfy it for long.

I don’t know where this is from but I didn’t write it:

"To touch her through the glass of air would be transgression, though I love her in her loneliness, prism'd in analysis (therefore therefore therefore, as if the bare fact could be talked into something more special), untranslatable as this: she wants someone to touch her. Through the glass of air she sees the world flown clear of her reflection, though her mind beats out: it hurts it hurts. To bear touching her, through the glass of air."

In the morning this will probably strike me as silly, but it’s really true. of course, it may also be the direct result of being given, two weeks late, a crockpot for my birthday. yes, i'm sure it's very useful, you know, eventually, but I just never thought, "Hmmm, I need a crockpot RIGHT NOW!"

Meanwhile, buy the Proclaimers’ newest album Restless Soul. I’ve been listening to it all weekend. You know, they're the guys who did "500 Miles" from the Benny and Joon soundtrack, and "I'm on my way" from one of the Shreks. You haven't lived until you've heard their completely serious version of "King of the road." This must be said out loud, very evenly and flatly to understand why this is such a great cover: "They get down with their bad selves." They even get a bit, shall we say, funky.

We had a family reunion last year, and all the girls had long, rippling dark brown hair. It was nice to fit in.

Hello and goodbye!

2005-09-17T10:57:00.000-05:00

Being the wonderful (late) person that I have been this week, I just got back from sending out my SSSP's socks to her. Many many apologies for the lateness, and I feel bad in case she thinks that I've forgotten her. Well, I haven't, and here's proof:

But wait! What's that on the horizon?

When I came back from the post office, something was waiting for me.

Koigu! I've never seen it in person before! Wow! And my sweet sweet pal sent the extra skein along--enough to make another pair.

I think I have a new friend. Dear SSSP, I can't access your webpage. I wish I had thought to take pictures of my sock a la our Harlotiness, but I was not clever enough. I'll just have to do it next time!

Ahhhhh...

2005-09-08T13:22:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow, my lovlies, I shall tell about my first-ever day of being a temp.